history

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Before 1490, the Native Americans knew nothing about the olive-skinned Europeans and the Europeans knew nothing about the seven million Native Americans living on these undiscovered lands (Henretta et al. 6-7). The growth of agriculture started to become practiced as well as gathering and hunting; the growing of plants, beans, squash, and maize and new weapons, such as spear throwers and bow and arrows. These practices started to become the main economic foundation for the Indians (Henretta et al. 7-8). The contributions, cultural sharing, and the few differences between the American Indians and Europeans have affected the shaping of all American history. Most Indian societies, were nowhere as complex, wealthy, and culturally inclined as the Hopewell, Pueblo, and Mississippian people (Henretta et al. 10). The Hopewell tribe was known for constructing huge mounds, that were eventually used as burial sites. They lived in large villages and had an extensive trade route that stretched from present-day Louisiana to Wisconsin. With this trade route system, they were able to pass along many of their items to neighboring tribes, creating the spread of agriculture, and giving an idea to the other Indians to create a barter system as well. Indians then started trading their animals, crops, household items, clothing, or weapons for different goods in return, but, by 500 b.c.e. the trade route system, as well as Hopewell tribe started to decline (Farless lecture 1 + Powerpoint). The Southwest was divided into three tribes, the Hohokams, Mollogons, and Anasazi. The Hohokams designed pottery, and by the year 1000, they started creating larger scaled structures called pueblos. The Mollogon tribe crafted unique black and white pottery and last... ... middle of paper ... ... America were the main civilizations. He carefully studied the societies and how different the land, market activity, and traditions were and by doing this, he was nearly blindsided by all the similarities such as love, freedom, and humanism, usually characterized as European values but he noticed that they appeared in the Indian tribes as well (Goody 22). After the discovery of America, the Europeans and Indians began sharing their beliefs on society, authority, and religious views. The Europeans showed the Indians how to use special armed weaponry and the Indians showed the Europeans how to hunt with wood-crafted tools like spears. They traded food and livestock, causing the agriculture to spread in both Europe and America. The contributions in both the Europeans and Indians helped shape the colonial frontier back then as well as our lives today. (Word count: 995)

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